I am reluctant to quote 64 lines.  For capturing dmesg output, I could try an
unsuccessful hard-drive boot of the generic kernel, and after I Reset, reboot
with the NetBSD CD, mount /dev/wd0a /mnt, and find that dmesg in /mnt/var/run
(do I remember correctly?).  Otherwise I could take a successful CD boot and
copy the dmesg output to an msdos-formatted floppy, which I have been able to
mount.  Otherwise, having downloaded the online man page for dosboot, I could
study that and dosboot the generic kernel from DR-DOS 7.03 (without having
loaded EMM386.EXE).  I guess from this you can figure I'm on i386.  CPU is AMD
Athlon 1.3 GHz, but I think the chipset is AMD, not VIA.  RAM is 256 MB, hard
disk is Western Digital 40 GB.

Is it feasible to cross-compile a NetBSD kernel from Linux if I can't get
NetBSD booted right?  I have Slackware 8.

Hard disk is being shared with DR-DOS 7.03, Linux (Slackware 8), and NetBSD,
and at least for now, I need to keep DR-DOS 7.03 and Linux.  I use LILO to boot.
Lack of success with NetBSD was the same whether I used LILO or NetBSD CD boot,
typing wd0a:netbsd at the boot: prompt (bypassing LILO entirely that way).
Linux is installed on a logical partition, which I don't think would be
accessible with NetBSD boot selector.

Now Peter Seebach suggests unplugging the keyboard momentarily and plugging it
back in, which might be worth a stab, though it reminds me of curing arthritis
with a copper bracelet.